Since I don’t want to echo too much of what everyone said I’ll add what I think is not said. While leadership is a key role it is vague, and charisma is not really needed while it can help with team moral. Being an effective PM doesn’t mean that everyone likes you. Since PMs must PDCA, foresight and being able to seamlessly shift their focus from a micro scale of day to day to a macro scale of the project progression is a dividing factor between a good and great PM. If you suspect an error that may occur, expending some effort and contacting the required people beforehand will make addressing the issue, if it ever happens easier. Creating an environment of transparent communication and understanding the people under you is important since sifting between what is said and not said, and whether the word choice of the employee accurately describes what is occurring can lead to the failure or success of a project.
While I am not advocating complete oversight where they look over everyone’s shoulders, in order to effectively support your team, the PM needs to understand where each member stands and what they need to finish their work both things explicitly said and those the employee may not even know themselves.
Many of the qualities mentioned in the above comments are minimal requirements to be able to get a single project out successfully and are large umbrella buzz-word traits that a PM needs but there are specific components of each of these traits that differentiate PMs. One component is the PM’s ability to understand the scope of the project and the factors that affect the completion/success of the project as well as identifying the people needed to be consulted and brought together from the beginning of the project. While many changes occur during the process of the project completion as we will see in the simulations, any PM who if asked if they could do a project over again understanding what they know now, many of the changes will occur with the scope definition and better understanding of the problem for planning purposes. (excluding errors and failed assumptions)
Understanding the rate determining steps(RDS) and critical steps in the project to ensure that the end goal is met, excluding time constraints placed, and understanding the parallel processes that need to be done to ensure seamless transition from one RDS to the next.
Ex. If a permit needs to be filed but it only lasts for 1 month, understanding the dynamics of the what is going on to ensure that getting the permit does not become a RDS is also a crucial component that falls under time management.